This is an outrageous position on Ramsey's part. I built a business. I dealt with employees and their guns. I will state unequivocally that forcing employers to allow employees to bring guns onto their property will get somebody killed. The blood will be on Ramsey's hands!

Ramsey said he plans to hammer out a compromise early next year over legislation that last year pinned Republicans between gun rights advocates — who want to commute to work with their firearms — and the business community, which wants to retain the right to ban guns on their property.

I have to part company with you on this one, WC. Having it known that employees must travel to work unarmed is needlessly dangerous to law-abiding employees and does not prevent criminals from bringing guns anyway.

The issue is not gun rights vs. property rights. The issue is the employee's property rights vs. the employer's property rights.

Each person's car is like their own inviolate embassy visiting the employer's parking area. What a law-abiding employee has in his or her embassy should be none of the employer's business.

In addition, being against gun rights in Tennessee only costs Democrats and progressives votes. It will never stop any criminals.

Many, many courts have already ruled, in many ways, that a person's private car (truck, etc) is an extension of their own home. Search & seizure cases, for instances, are replete with this concept in all kinds of courts - local, state, federal, etc. The principle is very well established in case law.

The news is also replete with instances showing over and over again that the so-called "gun free zones" are laughable when it comes to preventing whackos from inflicting damage with guns. All they do is insure that law abiding innocent citizens are sitting ducks to anyone who wishes to engage in essentially risk free mass carnage. As OneT says, legal prohibitions against otherwise legally possessed or carried guns will never deter criminals. We don't live in Utopia.

OneT has very precisely and accurately framed the issue correctly. Allowing a statutory inhibition of the property rights that is long- and well-established regarding private vehicles is a slippery slope and aside from the issue of impinging on individual rights that are constitutionally verified as existing and not to be infringed, such inhibition will open up a huge can of worms of unintended consequences.

Vehicles on the highway are an extension of the home, but there are several examples of when they can be searched at will. Parking on school property is one that comes to mind.

You are arguing that one person's property rights should trump another person's property rights and that just isn't the correct framing here. You have the right to your weapon and your vehicle. Are you saying by extension that you have the right to bring your weapon onto my property? I don't think so.

The employee who feels that unsafe working at my plant needs to find another job. I have personal experience with at least two situations where weapons in employee cars became a problem. We banned them as a result. Not once had anyone ever had to use a weapon to defend themselves while commuting. Forcing employers to allow weapons to be taken onto their property violates the employer's rights to a far greater extent than the employee's right is violated at present. And frankly you know from previous conversations that I disagree with the radical interpretation of the second amendment we are currently suffering under.

I'm not worried about stopping criminals, btw. I'm worried about what happens when an employee walks back to his car after being disciplined or fired and there's a weapon in the trunk.

You're thinking in terms of feeling unsafe while working at your plant. That is not what the employee is necessarily feeling unsafe about. There is all the distance and stops on the way to and from your plant, and depriving the employee of the ability - the right - to have that weapon where they are when they're NOT at work in your plant. To say that they cannot have their weapon secured in their car when they come to work is saying that they cannot have it with them anywhere between home and work - at the convenience store (when are there ever armed robberies or dangerous situations at convenience stores?)- or anywhere else they may need to be between home and work and back home again. It affects far more than simply what happens on your property.

I understand what you're saying about situations where an employee may be fired and be pissed, etc. Where I spend most of my work time there are over 3000 employees. Whenever someone is fired in a situation that requires them to leave the premises immediately (as opposed to a layoff, etc), they are escorted by an officer to retrieve their personal things (coat, whatever), and are then escorted by said officer to their vehicle, into their vehicle, and off the campus in their vehicle. That's as safe as that process can be made. Even if the employee had not been allowed have a weapon in their car in the parking lot, there is nothing that can prevent them from later coming back to the workplace with a weapon they have retrieved from home if they're that determined to wreak havoc. So there are ways around the issues that are real and valid concerns when firing an employee who has to leave immediately.

Are you saying that it is now legal for workers to have their guns in their cars at work, but that employers can have a policy against guns? Or?? It seemed that you were arguing to keep a no-gun law.

"Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey said he’s convinced employees already lock up their firearms in their vehicles parked at work, and he said he wants to quickly make the practice legal." Source: (link...)

If it is illegal, not just against policy, for workers to have guns in their cars, as the lt. gov. suggests, then we have a no-gun law, not no-gun employer policies. A no-gun law is a bad idea, as I outlined above.

The proposed law would make it illegal for employers to enforce a no gun policy. It would be illegal for an employer to prevent firearms from being brought onto his property. It would allow the currently twisted interpretation of the second amendment to trump private property rights. I suppose the next step would be RB slippery slope to make it illegal for home owners to bar someone from bringing a gun up their driveway. That will work out just peachy.

Think about what the effect of this law could be. I'll tell you right now people will die.

I feel that the current interpretation of the second amendment, where the terms "Well regulated militia" as the context for the right to keep arms, and the right to "bear arms" being exempted from reasonable context and slanted somehow into a right to have a weapon on your person at all times regardless of location or situation, deserves the term "twisted". More guns does not mean "safer". Where does this end...with everyone carrying a weapon in every situation? All the teachers at school? All the people sitting in church? It only takes a cursory glance at our history to see that this doesn't work.

If you need a weapon on you at all times in order to feel safe, I accept that, but I should have the right to tell you that you can't bring it onto my property and to thereby stay off it. I should be able to set the conditions under which you gain entry to my business and home and that right is what the proposed law intends to take away.

At no time through all the comments did I see anyone mention that the "employee" is being treated like a criminal, though the direct inference was made a number of times. This seems to be the whole reason for the "left" to strip our gun rights, which the Supreme Law of the Land {as it names itself} says in part, "... the rights of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". Seems there's been several tons of infringing already.

Property Rights???

Which is more important, property rights or individual rights? If the individual's rights are violable, then property rights are proportionate reduced. May I point out that a police officer can come onto your property, into your very house, {whether you allow firearms or not} and shoot you dead with minimal repercussions if any? In fact, in this area they don't even have to be in their "jurisdiction" anymore. But raise even an argument in resistance and see where you end up.

Perhaps you've not seen what the excesses of "Majority Rule" have done in this country, but when the government is allowed to violate the rights of one, the rights of all are reduced.

There was a thing that came out of Germany during WWII, as I recall:

They came for the poor, but I wasn't poor, so I said nothing.
They came for the infirm, but I wasn't infirm, so I said nothing.
They came for the Jews, but I wasn't a Jew, so I said nothing.
.....
Now they've come for me, and there's no one left to say anything.

Welcome to the USA.

So what is the compromise position? Seems to me that "We the People" have compromised enough. From where we were in the late 1700's to today, where have we come to? Our society is more barbaric and more savage than in the 1700's or 1800's and I suspect it is mainly because of the INFRINGEMENT of the Second Amendment to date, so how about those who promote tyranny COMPROMISE a bit and let's get some of those oppressive laws off the books. They are illegal anyway, according to the Supreme Law of the Land.

The places where more freedom with guns and who carries them where have NOT been met with the blood baths that were predicted with terms akin to "I'll tell you right now people will die." That simply has not come true.

To be sure, there have been notable killings that amounted to mass slaughter, such as at the Batman movie. But those were not committed by law abiders who were having to honor a rule that said "no guns here." They were, in fact, in such a place. And the gunman totally ignored that rule. That rule does not protect people, it protects the would-be perpetrator. All the rules or private policies in the world would not have protected Dagger Canoes had that or any disgruntled employee left the premises, gone and got a gun, and come back and done something that is ALREADY illegal. Those rules simply do not protect anybody. Never have. Never will. Mass murder with any kind of weapon is already illegal, and a rule on private property is not going to stop anybody who wants to "go postal" from going postal.

That kind of rule is kind of like peeing in your pants wearing black trousers - you get a nice warm feeling inside but there is no outward effect, and you're still pissed on.